Knowledge that Transforms

In this qualitative study based on 95 interviews with Chinese subordinates and their German supervisors, we inductively develop a model which advances theoretical understanding by showing how inter-cultural trust development in hierarchical relationships is the result of six distinct elements: the subordinate trustor’s cultural profile (cosmopolitans, hybrids, culturally bounds), the psychological mechanisms operating within the trustor (role expectations and cultural accommodation), and contextual moderators (e.g., country context, time spent in foreign culture, and third-party influencers), which together influence the trust forms (e.g., presumptive trust, relational trust) and trust dynamics (e.g., trust breakdown and repair) within relationship phases over time (initial contact, trust continuation, trust disillusionment, separation, and acculturation). Our findings challenge the assumption that cultural differences result in low levels of initial trust and highlight the strong role the subordinate’s cultural profile can have on the dynamics and trajectory of trust in hierarchical relationships. Our model highlights that inter-cultural trust development operates as a variform universal, following the combined universalistic-particularistic paradigm in cross-cultural management, with both culturally generalizable etic dynamics, as well as culturally specific etic manifestations.

Globalization, defined as trade- and FDI-related interdependence among nations, increases social welfare by transmitting managerial practices, advanced technologies, and labor skills across borders. Recent declines in FDI flows have prompted scholars to speculate on the nature, magnitude, and determinants of de-globalization trends. We investigate whether a U.S. national security-related foreign investment screening law, the Foreign Investment and National Security Act of 2007 (FINSA), contributes to de-globalization trends. FINSA awarded a regulator known as the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States broad new powers to revise or reject foreign acquisitions of firms in national security-related industries. Using a difference-in-differences research design, a wide variety of model specifications, and estimation samples spanning 1990–2016, we document post-FINSA declines in foreign takeovers of U.S. firms in national security-related industries. Consistent with techno-nationalism, we document that takeover declines are concentrated among research-intensive national security firms. Placebo, event-time, and robustness tests corroborate our results. Our empirical evidence suggests that foreign investment screening laws help explain the nature, magnitude, and determinants of recent de-globalization trends and prompts multinational enterprise managers to increasingly weight the political factors behind foreign investment screening laws when assessing foreign investment strategies.

Digital solutions are increasingly used to address "wicked problems" that are locally embedded but require global approaches. Scaling these solutions internationally is imperative for their success, but to date we know little about this process. Using a qualitative case study methodology, our paper analyzes how four digital solutions driven by the United Nations are built and how they scale internationally. These solutions address wicked problems through artificial intelligence, blockchain, and geospatial mapping, and are embedded in networks of partners which evolve during scaling to create unique ecosystem roles and configurations. We identify different ecosystem roles and find that the specific properties of digital solutions - modularity, generativity and affordances - enable either adaptation or replication during scaling. Building on these insights, we derive a typology of four different types of international scaling, which vary in their ecosystem versatility (how the ecosystem changes across locations) and the local adaptation of the application (the problems the solution addresses). This study presents a new way to examine the replication and adaptation dilemma for ecosystems and extends internationalization theory to the digital world.

We identify and conceptualize the phenomenon of subsidiary-building acquisitions. International acquisitions provide a powerful means for multinational corporations (MNCs) to grow their existing subsidiaries. The integration of subsidiary-building acquisitions involves a triad of actors: the MNC, the existing subsidiary, and the target. However, extant research emphasizes international acquisitions as a cross-border phenomenon, focusing in a limited way on the foreign acquirer–local target dyad, thus ignoring the complexities of subsidiary-building acquisitions. Through a qualitative study of a Norwegian target acquired by a French MNC with an existing Norwegian subsidiary, we find that subsidiary-building acquisitions involve tensions between autonomy and integration in two distinct and interrelated integration processes: local integration and cross-border integration. We uncover how pressures for autonomy in one process counter-intuitively trigger pressures for integration in the other. These dynamics fuel headquarters–subsidiary relationships and subsidiary cohesion, the two components of social integration in subsidiary-building acquisitions. By unearthing the underexplored phenomenon of subsidiary-building acquisitions, we provide novel insights into the complexities of international acquisitions. We bridge the merger and acquisition (M&A) and MNC literatures, thus paving the way for research on international acquisitions to move beyond the acquirer–target dyad to understand their implications for MNCs.

The advent of Industry 4.0 promises to transform the global business landscape, the nature of markets and industries, and the way multinationals organize their operations as well as how and where they compete. These changes will have important – indeed profound – implications for IB scholarship. In this article, we explain Industry 4.0 and its distinguishing characteristics; discuss its organizational and strategic implications for multinationals; and outline the fundamental questions it raises for future IB research. To spur future analysis, we also present a conceptual foundation that articulates the new features, processes, and capabilities that support MNEs’ pursuit of Industry 4.0-related opportunities surrounding digitalization, intelligence, technology, and innovation. We also discuss what Industry 4.0 means for IB research concerning social engagement, environmental sustainability, and international entrepreneurship. We elucidate how this new landscape shapes the extant IB literature and how future research can push it further along.

We examine how ties with multiple host-country political institutions contribute to MNE subsidiary performance in countries with weak formal institutions. We suggest that forging relationships between subsidiaries and host-country government actors, local chieftains, and religious leaders generates regulative, normative, and cultural-cognitive political resources. We integrate institutional and configuration theories to argue that similarity to an ideal configuration of the three political resources contributes to MNE subsidiary performance, and that the more dysfunctional host-country institutions, the greater the impact on performance. We test our hypotheses using primary and archival data from 604 MNE subsidiaries in 23 Anglophone sub-Saharan African countries and find support for our hypotheses. In our conclusion, we discuss the wider theoretical, managerial, and public-policy implications of our findings.

We replicate and extend Mohr et al.’s work (Journal of International Business Studies 47: 408–426, 2016), which hypothesized that increased state participation in the equity of international joint ventures (IJVs) decreased dissolution likelihoods, as tested with a sample of 623 Sino–foreign IJVs in the 1985–2009 period. Given the rapid developments in China’s economy and its institutional environment, we ask the question of whether the effects in Mohr et al. (2016) can be observed over a long period of time. We examine the generalizability of their findings (1) by replicating their study with a larger sample from the same data source, and over a longer period (1985–2017), and (2) by studying a sample of 803 IJVs from the same population but from another data source (the Annual Census of Chinese Industrial Enterprises) in the 2000–2017 period. We find that state equity can benefit IJV survival from favorable regulatory support, but it can also lead to lower survival rates due to unfavorable governmental intervention. Overall, we advocate a two-sided effect of state equity that leads to a curvilinear relationship between state equity and IJV dissolution, where time is an important boundary condition.

The potential of multinational enterprises (MNEs) to accelerate economic development and reduce inequality has been recognized since the industrial revolution, when states sought to actively engage foreign capital in industrialization. Over time, the MNE–state compact has waxed and waned in significance due to (geo-)political developments, shaped in part by how the economic surpluses of foreign capital were distributed between domestic actors. Government policies matter as to how they prioritize international competitiveness relative to domestic inequality reduction. The contemporary rise of within-country income inequality alongside increasing globalization has drawn attention to the causes of inequality (including the activities of MNEs). Scholars in development studies have examined the underlying causes of increasing income inequalities through the lens of inequality of opportunities. We discuss how adopting this lens could advance our understanding of how MNEs influence inequality directly, as well as in interaction with the policies of the state. Subsequently, we propose a research agenda, taking into account micro-, meso-, and macro-level perspectives. In our discussion, we explicitly highlight that the MNE–state compact is dynamic, continuously changing with the evolving political and socio-economic landscape. MNEs can have an impact on inequality of opportunities, contingent on the nature of their engagement with states and other stakeholders.

We investigate the relation between international taxation and the organizational form of foreign direct investment (FDI). Using micro-level data on inbound FDI relations in Germany, we find that a higher tax burden on income earned in a corporate subsidiary increases the probability that a multinational corporation (MNC) conducts foreign investment through a non-corporate flow-through. This effect is economically meaningful and varies with the relative importance of tax-motivated income shifting, a subsidiary’s non-tax benefits of limited liability and legal independence, and an MNC’s local knowledge. Moreover, we examine potential real effects of organizational form choices and document that affiliates established as flow-throughs exhibit a lower loss propensity and are less profitable than affiliates established as subsidiaries. Taken together, our findings inform policy makers about the potential response of MNCs to tax-law changes and suggest that the chosen organizational form can shape the future characteristics of investments abroad.